Peter Glendinning

What a daunting problem Nelson Mandela faced on 9 May 1994, the day before his inauguration as President of the Republic of South Africa. He knew that when his hand was lowered on May 10, just after taking the oath of office, the whole world would be waiting to hear what his first words would be to his fellow South Africans.

Madiba expressed his aspirations for the new South Africa and its people in a soil-related metaphor, one that is viewed as a true hope for unity, as follows: “To my compatriots. I have no hesitation in saying that each one of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the Bushveld. Each time one of us touches the soil of this land, we feel a sense of personal renewal.” The realities of South Africa today are the result not only of the aspirations expressed in Mandela’s metaphor, but of other personal metaphors by other people, some at variance with his and some not, that have guided powerful political, governmental, social and traditional leaders in the intervening years.

Attached to the Soil was created in 2019, the 25th anniversary year of Mandela’s inauguration, in my collaboration with 48 young people and our 50 portrait subjects. Eighteen of the photographs are housed here. Each work is based on new soil-related metaphors formed by youth in the “Born Free Generation.” Those metaphors reflected their aspirations, as Madiba did his, in the context of a 25-year old nation. The youth who chose to step forward to collaborate realized that just as their daily lives were defined in some ways by the metaphors of those in the past and present, 25 years hence the youth of that era will look to them, the youth of today, and ask, “what was your metaphor, and how is my life and our country the better for it?” My young collaborators also found a person with a story from their life that related in some way to that metaphor, someone who would be willing to collaborate with us to create tableaus, story-telling portrayals that would relate not only to their life but to the realities of the lives of so many others like them. Through listening to oral history interviews with each, a short story was written to complete the three-part portrayals. Any success I had as an artist in creating works that would convey their realities and aspirations depended on the trust of the youth and the portrayal subjects that they would be shared widely, create a larger dialogue, and honored. I hope they feel that trust was well placed.

I have rented an apartment in the Marais for 2 weeks each summer for several years.  The environment is eclectic, romantic, nostalgic, of another era but also of today.  The patina of the life of the owner that becomes part of my being during this time, is the subject of these “portraits en creux.”  Connecting in a tangible manner with another man through the experience of adopting his domicile as my own, becomes an opportunity to recognize a resonance that is both sympathetic and real.  In every sense, they reflect on and reveal essential natures in another, in me, and in that place of imagination, My Paris.  This work has been recognized by the American Society of Media Photographers as among the 24 "Best of 2015," an honor for which I am very grateful. See the site: https://asmp.org/best-2015-glendinning#.Vn1KFTbU6Or

Since 2015, photographs from this series have been widely exhibited, most recently at Studio Baxton Gallery, Brussels

J'ai loué un appartement dans le Marais pendant deux semaines chaque été pendant plusieurs années. L'environnement est éclectique, romantique, nostalgique, d'une autre époque mais aussi d'aujourd'hui. La patine de la vie du propriétaire qui devient une partie de mon être à cette époque fait l'objet de ces «portraits en creux». Se connecter de manière tangible à un autre homme à travers l'expérience de l'adoption de son domicile comme mon propre possibilité de reconnaître une résonance à la fois sympathique et réelle. Dans tous les sens, ils réfléchissent et révèlent des natures essentielles chez une autre, en moi et dans ce lieu d'imagination, Mon Paris. Ce travail a été reconnu par l’American Society of Media Photographers parmi les 24 "Best of 2015", un honneur pour lequel je suis très reconnaissant. Voir le site: https://asmp.org/best-2015-glendinning#.Vn1KFTbU6Or Depuis 2015, de nombreuses photographies de cette série ont été exposées, plus récemment à la galerie Studio Baxton à Bruxelles.

I am interested in how the most ordinary situations in the lives of others are of interest to those of us who do not experience such things in our own lives.  Quoting out of context, creating a new reality of awesome proportion from that which is most mundane, is one of the things I enjoy most about photography.  I have made these photographs over the course of many years, and never tire of visiting the Farm.  Diana Camera, various color negative films, flash off camera.  Early prints made on Agfa color paper, 16"x20," later on Ektacolor RC.

The landscape of the farm conveys to me a certain stillness, uncertainty, and anticipation, in its preciseness of organization.  This may be partly related to the mystery for most of us as to what really goes on there.  I think it has more to do with other kinds of landscapes that share this same simple order, in which there is a starkness that hints at a deeply embedded secret.  I find these as unsettling in their own way as the photographs made inside the Farm buildings.  Diana Camera, various color negative films.  Early prints made on Agfa color paper, 16"x20," later on Ektacolor RC, now on Epson inkjet.

In Autumn 2008 I began to experience unusual pain, which progressed to the point where I could barely walk, sleep, live. The pictures reflect my outlook on the doomed future that awaited ahead of the doomed present at that point in my life. This phase did not result in my demise, but in a cure through the research of a doctor long-dead, who was reviled by the medical profession in his lifetime.

If you know of anyone who has been diagnosed with rheumatoid disease, fibromyalgia, psoriatic arthritis, lupus, or other auto-immune disease induced pain, I beg you to direct them to www.roadback.org.  There they will find a description of the work of Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown.  His research and the treatment of a brave Lansing, Michigan, Rheumatologist who was willing to treat me under his theories, saved my life.  I don’t make pictures like this anymore!

I visited South Africa for the month of February in 1999, five years after the end of the apartheid era when the republic was emerging from years of isolation. My creative goal was to make portraits of a cross-section of South Africans at work, collaborating with students studying with the enthusiastic professors on the faculties of Technikons in Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Port Elizabeth. The students proposed subjects whom they felt were examples of the hard-working men and women of the new South Africa, and those people were very generous partners in sharing themselves with me to collaborate on making a portrait that would be true. Hasselblad camera, 80mm lens, Kodak Vericolor film and enlargements as C-prints, strobes with a Hosemaster Turbofilter (no Photoshop whatsoever).

These were made in part as a result of research into the 150th anniversary of Michigan's statehood in 1837, funded by a Michigan Council for the Arts Individual Artist Grant and MSU research award.  Noticing the curious nature of landscapes of previous eras in which transportation was by modes other than the automobile...I wondered what our present landscape would reveal to those living here in 2137, and to those living in these times as well.  Wista 8"x10" field view camera, 300mm lens, Kodak Vericolor negative film, contact printed on Ektacolor paper. 

When the light seems to the viewer to be one with the flora, to emerge from it rather than illuminate it, the two can become one and convey what it was that I felt. Hasselblad camera, 80mm lens, Kodak Vericolor negative film, C prints made in my darkroom in a variety of sizes.

When a natural scientist comes upon a strange place, their first instinct is to catalogue the flora and fauna, as I did in Florida.  Hasselblad camera, 80mm lens, Kodak Tri-X film, prints on Agfa Portriga 11"x14" paper, selenium toned.

Fifteen of the photographs in the Tablescapes series were compiled in a limited edition folio of original C prints, and became the first works of mine to become part of a museum collection (The George Eastman House, Rochester).  These fragments were collected from the homes of friends, family, and acquaintances.  50mm lens, flash on Nikon F camera, Kodak Vericolor 35mm film, original C prints on 11"x14" paper.

The photographs were made at events, of events that were perceived and then created with a 20mm lens, strobe on a cord off camera, Nikon F, Tri-X in D-76 developer, Beers Developer for the Agfa Brovira selenium toned prints.

I was in line at a NYC camera shop in 1979, waiting while the woman in front of me begged the salesman to purchase the old camera that had been her father’s. Upon refusal, she turned to leave in frustration when I asked to take a look. It was a Stereo Realist, a 35mm film camera that made 2 exposures at the same time which, when printed to 3”x3” and mounted on thin mat board could be viewed through a stereopticon with the “3-D” effect as engaging as any made, I think, since Sir Charles Wheatstone made the first in 1832. My ongoing subject over years was a response to the front and back yards of modest cookie-cutter houses in Queens, New York. I was, and am, intrigued by the urge to make a space one’s own and how humans do that, and why, and especially how those spaces evoke so much of the owner. These are scans from the stereo cards printed in that 79-85 period, somewhat color shifted in certain cases, but to my mind even more charming and revealing as a result.

Beginning with its incorporation in 1990, Photography Associates, Inc. was the vehicle I used to make creative photographs for clients. My official portrait of newly-elected Governor John Engler was not my most creative portrait, but it was the first job in my new studio and I am eternally grateful to him and First Lady Michelle Engler for dancing there to the country music playing before the portrait. The primary reason art directors partnered with me, I’m told, is because they knew I would bring something very different in terms of lighting, composition, even cutting/pasting, to give their clients a new look. I used the Hosemaster system extensively to paint with light, and work intuitively but carefully. Illness ended my client-centered work, but I took the lessons learned after recovery and applied them to my own expressive personal explorations of meaning in later projects.